Latest Technology News

A name floated this morning by The Wall Street Journal as a likely choice by President Obama to head the Justice Dept.'s antitrust division, may not exactly be the choice Microsoft would have preferred.

Christine Varney, a former Federal Trade Commission member in the Clinton administration, and an attorney in the high-visibility firm of Hogan & Hartson in Washington, DC since then, appears to be the leading candidate for appointment to a deputy attorney-general's post in the Justice Dept.'s Antitrust Division, according to a WSJ report this morning. During the US Microsoft antitrust trial, but following her tenure with the FTC, Varney was an outspoken critic of Microsoft, especially since she was on the team representing Netscape, the company that was most wronged by Microsoft's actions at that time.

Google today is expected to follow the lead of IBM and Apple, defying the economy by making a positive showing in its results for the latest financial quarter. In spite of the financial downturn, many analysts predict that Google will post an increased profit in results set for delivery before the clang of the stock market's closing bell.

In a note to clients, one financial analyst said Google gained during the quarter from heavy use of search ads by retailers wanting to get deeply discounted merchandise out the door.

The DHS' US-CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) released a security alert yesterday that disabling Autorun in Windows, an action meant to stanch the spread of the Downadup virus, is actually a vulnerability itself.

The Downadup worm has reached epidemic proportions (meaning, I have begun to overhear conversations between elderly women talking about it). But an announcement from US-CERT this week says that one of the remedies to the problem, a registry fix that disables Autorun, is unsound.

Earlier this week, TorrentFreak said the upcoming Myka BitTorrent set-top box looks like a scam after the company purported to be on schedule to ship the box in four to six weeks. Betanews sought clarification.

The Myka set-top box promises to deliver a BitTorrent experience on TV via a Linux-based OS. With 80, 160, and 500 GB HDDs, the unit features HDMI, S-Video, SPDIF and composite outs, and is slated to cost between $300 and $450.

There's not much fun in Finland either today, as mobile-phone giant Nokia turned in an earnings report reflecting glum economic outlooks worldwide.

The company's 69% drop in Q4 net profits surprised analysts, and the company also took the earnings call opportunity to warn that contingent that sales in 2009 were apt to decline more than previously predicted. The company now says that worldwide sales in '09 are likely to be down 10% year-to-year, rather than the previously predicted 5%; as CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo put it, "the macro environment is challenging and, we believe, will remain so in 2009."

Seagate Technologies spokesperson Michael L. Hall gave Betanews an update this afternoon on the company's situation with its Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives, which have been failing in record numbers. Hall acknowledged that some units manufactured up until last month do have an issue where data is rendered inaccessible after power-up, and went on to acknowledge that the company's initial fix for the problem only made matters worse.

"While we believe that the vast majority of customers will not experience any disruption related to this issue, as part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, Seagate is offering a free firmware upgrade to proactively address those with potentially affected products," Hall stated. "This new firmware upgrade corrects compatibility issues that occurred with the firmware download provided on our support Web site on Jan. 16. We regret any inconvenience that the firmware issues have caused our customers."

Addressing security issues for both the Mac and Windows platforms, Apple has released an update to QuickTime not unlike the one released last spring, only less prolific.

Seven QuickTime vulnerabilities are addressed in the latest update, all revolving around malware movie files that cause "unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution."

Although he wouldn't specify where or how many, an IBM spokesperson today confirmed to Betanews that IBM is sending out pink slips this week. An IBM employee union known as Alliance@IBM is predicting 16,000 job cuts.

On the Alliance Web site, IBM employees reported yesterday that the layoffs are already happening in IBM software and distribution divisions in the US and Canada.

The WiMAX Forum launched its Global Roaming Program today, a means for regional WiMAX network operators to interact with each other in order to implement roaming services. The program, available at Wimaxforum.org, includes a "how-to" manual for launching roaming services, spec sheets, contract templates, and a pre-launch roaming test plan.

While WiMAX deployments are still vastly spread apart, there are currently more than 407 in place across 133 countries.

South Korean Consumer Electronics maker LG posted a big loss in its fourth quarter 2008 earnings report this morning, and like Samsung last week, the company will restructure its business.

Like nearly everyone else now, LG's expectation is that market demand will remain slow and the Korean Won will hover at its 2008 value.

Returning to his old job, Seagate CEO Stephen Luzco reported worse than expected financial results last night, adding that job layoffs, salary cuts, and building closings announced last week will save the storage specialist $300 million.

In a conference call with analysts, Luzco admitted that Seagate's execution could have been better during the quarter, when the company's revenues fell to $2.27 billion.

The lack of guidance in Microsoft's accelerated earnings report this morning triggered a selloff in stocks on the NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges, and there are indications that the company has suspended trades.

8:57am PT: Call wraps up.

This morning, AOL launched its latest version of Web Mail, which gives users the ability to tailor their Web Mail window with gadgets from the myAOL Gallery, and integrate their mailboxes with third-party mail services like Yahoo and Gmail. Additionally, the AOL Mail Synchronization feature that has been in beta testing since November has been added to the completed feature list.

Rounding out today's update is the ability for users to skin their AOL Web Mail page, similar to Windows Live Home and iGoogle.

The news from Redmond is actually worse than analysts estimated, with sharply lower revenue from the Client segment (Windows Vista) triggering one of the most substantial layoffs in its history.

Choosing not to wait until its originally planned time of 5:30 pm this afternoon, Microsoft held true to its new policy of corporate transparency, letting the world know as it informed its own employees that as many as 5,000 jobs will be cut from its payroll over the next 18 months, 1,400 of those immediately.

TomTom, Europe's leading provider of Personal Navigation Devices, announced a cost-cutting program and re-alignment which involves cutting around 7% of its staff, or about 115 individuals. Citing a "challenging consumer spending environment," the layoff announcement precedes the company's fourth quarter earnings report by just over one month, and is expected to save TomTom an annual €35 million.